Flying the TARDIS
by NikitaDarkstar
Summary: The Doctor and the Master has a disagreement on how to handle the TARDIS. AU!, cracky 10th Doctor/Simm!Master fun oneshot, no slash.  Maybe if you read it upside down and backwards.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is my first Dr Who thing ever, and it's silly crack, hopefully someone will find it amusing. 10th Doctor/Simm!Master, No slash. And no, I never accepted the end of The end of Time, so I guess it's AU! also. I don't own Doctor who! If I did 11th wouldn't have happened and the Master would show up more often.

"You use a hammer to fly the TARDIS?" The Master held up the offending object, giving the Doctor a skeptical, untrusting look.

"Well, the controls get stuck now and then, and it's a rubber hammer, perfectly harmless." The Doctor said with a cheeky grin plastered on his face.

The Master sighed and leaned back against the railing, tapping the hammer against it in a quick, four-beat rhythm. "If you bothered with some basic maintenance this piece of space junk might actually work."

"Oi! Don't diss the TARDIS. She may be old and she may have seen better days but-"the retort was cut short by the rubber hammer whizzing past the Doctors head, close enough to actually mess up his hair. It made a loud clanking noise as it hit the center console a few feet behind the Doctor.

"The bloody TARDIS is dead, and we're stuck on this lousy, uninhabited piece of rock because you're too lazy to clean the god damn thing!"The master took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down a bit; not that showing his displeasure was a bad thing, not at all. But the drums tended to get louder when he got himself too worked up, and he preferred to not let them drive him over the edge, after all, it's easier to enjoy casual tormenting of others when you only got one screw lose instead of all of them.

The Doctor gave his friend a few minutes to calm down, leaning against the center console and watching the Masters fingers, waiting for him to stop drumming them against the railing before picking up the argument again. "Okay, so I might not be the best pilot around, but she's still old, meant to be piloted by more than one person, and I've been abit to busy to worry about it. Not that I actually worried since she's been working flawlessly until now. And besides it really shouldn't need to be repaired that often, and-"

"Doctor, shut up. You're rambling." The Master growled, walked over and snatched the sonic screwdriver from the Doctors hand.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Fixing the TARDIS since you're obviously not competent enough." The Master sneered and hunched down under the controls to try and find the problem.

"Well, you're not doing it with that." The Doctor snatched his screwdriver back and quickly backed up a few steps.

The Master fixed the younger Time Lord with a smoldering glare, actually causing him to cringe a little. "Fine. I'll use my own."

"What?" The Doctor looked genuinely surprised when he saw the laser screwdriver in the Masters hands as he started to work on the ship.

The Master ignored him but after about two minutes of awkward silence, he gave in. "Really Doctor, if you organized things you might have noticed it 'disappeared' over a month ago."

"Oh. Right." The Doctor shoved his hands into his pockets, looking at the blonds back for a bit before wandering off.

"Where do you think you're going?" The Master snapped as the Doctor left the control room.

"Cleaning." The reply brought a grin to the Masters face which was quickly followed by a quiet, but long and elaborate string of Gallifreyan curses as he got a shock powerful enough to stop one of his hearts.

The Doctor was stopped just outside the control room by a loud, angry snarl, followed by a repeated clanking noise which sounded a lot like a rubber hammer being used on metal surfaces. "Well, the TARDIS still has it in for him…" He mused, and grinning wandered off to find a broom… and whatever else needed for cleaning. An excavator might come in handy too.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**: The plot bunny decided a one shot wasn't enough and is now trying to create a plot. Still don't own Doctor Who, still wish I did. Major love goes out to the Tardis Technical Index for any and all info you could ever want about Tardises! .net/tardis

"Had any luck?"

Just barely managing to save himself from the indignity of slamming his head against the console from surprise the Master grunted a"No, you?" and turned to look at the Doctor.

"There's not enough luck in the universe to make up for six hours of cleaning. You don't even want to know what I found in the extra kitchen…" The Doctor made a face. The 'extra' kitchen was in fact meant to be the main kitchen, but since it was about as far from the control room as interdimensionally possible it didn't see much use. In fact none at all for almost 75 years… with the possible exception of what had been growing in one of the cupboards. But at least now that area of the Tardis didn't smell funny anymore, well not much.

The Doctor sighed and sat down on the beaten up bench, watching the Master where he was sitting on the floor. "Really, after six hours you're still clueless?"

"No." the Master glared venomously. "I just haven't had any luck with fixing it." He got up from the floor and started to pace around the room.

"Of course it would help if she didn't try to electrocute me every so often." He hit the center console with the butt end of his laser screwdriver in a childish attempt at revenge. The Doctor smirked, and the Tardis didn't really care.

"So what's wrong with her?" The Doctor moved to where he could see one of the monitors better. "The Artron energy levels are all over the place!"

The Master nodded slowly and rubbed at his face in frustration. "The artronic resonators are clogged up, and no I don't know how that is possible either." He paused, looking at the Doctors increasingly worried face before adding, "And the Conceptual Geometer is offline. I assume you don't have a spare somewhere?"

It took a few minutes for the Doctor to fully process that bit of information. "Oh that's bad, that's very bad." He ran a hand through his brown hair, trying to fight off the rising panic. "The Conceptual Geometer can't be offline. They're virtually indestructible, and you can't travel in time without it. At all. Are you sure?" He darted around the central column, getting down on his belly and poking his head through the maintenance hatch, trying to get a better look at it.

"Unless your Tardis has an exceptionally bad sense of humor, then yes it's offline." He sighed, leaning back against the railing, waiting for the Doctor to finish his pointless inspection. After about five minutes the Doctor did get back up, only to hurry down under the platform to get a look at the artronic resonators, where he almost instantly started to make various dissatisfied noises. The Master shook his head in annoyance and started to fiddle with the controls, trying to get the Tardis to at least tell him where and when they were.

When the Doctor finally decided he had seen enough and gotten back up on the platform he could read location and time on a screen, Sol system, Inner Asteroid Belt, 21st Century."To Earth then." The Doctor beamed, which made the Master even more frustrated, they had very, very different opinions about Earth, humans and the 21st century.

"Of all the bloody where's and when's it had to be this. That's just great." He fumed and somehow managed to check the impulse to drum his fingers against the console.

The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets, running some numbers through his head. "And it'll take us about a month to get there considering the condition we're in. Well…. A week if we can clean up the resonators." He trailed off, looking thoughtful.

"Yes. Well have fun with that." The Master turned on his heels, but before he managed to actually get anywhere he was stopped in his track by an outraged "Oi!" from the Doctor.

"You're not going to help?" his voice sounded angry enough indeed, but he had a look of utter shock and despair on his face.

"No. You passed the Bio-Mechanics class, even if it took you three attempts and a lot of help. Still it should be enough to handle some simple cleaning." The Master replied with an even tone, glaring over his shoulder.

"But that mess looked horrible, like a troop of Judoon had a collective sneeze and cough attack down there!" He emphasized his protest with a grimace.

"I'm sure it's nowhere near as bad as the thing you found in the kitchen." The Master smirked, "Besides, I'm not the one in a hurry to get to Earth." He added before walking off, leaving the Doctor with even more cleaning to deal with.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** Right so as I said before, BBC owns this, I don't. Sorry if it seems a little cut off. It was getting abit to long and the rest needs some serious editing to get myself over the mental brick wall I wrote myself into. Hope you enjoy it.

The trip ended up taking closer to two weeks instead of the expected one week. It was still unbelievably fast by 21st century human standards, but for the two time lords it was agonisingly slow.

They tried to land as gently as possible, but materialized about 30ft above the ground and hovered for a few seconds while the Tardis made horrible groaning sounds instead of its normal 'vworp' before gravity suddenly set in, sending the time machine crashing to ground, and hurling the two time lords inside to the floor. To surprised bystanders the entire procedure looked like something out of a cartoon.

The Master slowly opened his eyes. From what he could tell he was on his back since he was pretty sure the fuzzy thing he was looking at was the ceiling. And if it was fuzzy that meant he must have hit his head, and most likely had a concussion, which was sure to put him in a bad mood. He took the time to feel if anything else was hurt, and satisfied with only one wrist that might be sprained, and the very, very probable concussion he slowly eased himself up.

The Doctor knew he must be injured when the Master offered him a hand to get back on his feet, but considering how much the world was spinning and his entire body felt like he'd been run over, he gladly accepted it.

"You look like a proper mess." The Master stated dryly. The Doctor had evidently hit his face on the controls before hitting the floor, and now seemed to have a broken nose, and had blood on his suit and cuts and bruises here and there.

"I must if you offer help." He gently prodded his nose, yep, it was most certainly broken. "We probably should clean ourselves up before finding out where we are."

A quick visit to the Tardis med-bay and a change of clothes later and they were feeling significantly better and ready to explore their surroundings.

"Cardiff." They echoed each other when they stepped outside. "Do you have to sound so happy about it?" the Master glowered, as predicted his mood had taken a turn for the worse. Not even Time Lords shook of a concussion without resting for at least a day.

"Of course I do. I wanted to get to Cardiff after all." The Doctor beamed and waited to be prodded for an explanation. The Master however didn't feel like indulging him and simply walked past him instead.

"Well it really makes a lot of sense to come here right now." The Doctor started with a little less enthusiasm, hurrying after the Master. "You see, there happens to be a Torchwood headquarters here, and before you say anything, no I don't like them either, but it's either them or UNIT, and I think Torchwood might be a bit more helpful… and willing to part with their gadgets."

"You're mad." The Master looked back over his shoulder, and stopped to let the Doctor catch up. "Why would they help us? Even if they actually happen to have anything we could use, which I doubt."

"Well..." he started, before deciding to somewhat change the subject. " At least the old girl is parked on top of the rift, so at least she'll be recharged if you're right. Gods knows she needs it." The Doctor sighed and when they got out from a side-street stopped to get his bearings. "Blimey... Cardiff is confusing... I really prefer London. Well, except for the tea, you can't get good tea in London. Well not easily."

"Humans can't make proper tea period. Now please, shut up and get us to where we're going, and hope we arrived before 2008."

The Doctor swallowed hard hearing the edge in the Masters voice; he knew perfectly well that tone had spelled doom for more than one planet in the past. "Right, well we're parked on top of the rift, near an edge, but still on it. Meaning Torchwood has to be nearby since they're also on the rift, and it's a small rift." But then again, anything smaller than Belgium was small by the Doctor standards, so this rift was more of a pin-prick than a rift as far as he was concerned.

It took about 15 minutes of walking and a very angry "What is HE doing here?" in a broad American accent for the Doctor to not only realise what the Master had meant, but also to realise they had indeed arrived after 2008 if Jacks gun aimed at the Masters head was anything to go by.

The Master was about to reply, but the Doctor cut him off. "Jack! We were just looking for you." Tilting his head and frowning he quickly added, "And put the gun away, please."

"But he's-"

"Yes and it's a long story, now please put the gun away Jack."

Jack reluctantly lowered the gun and put it away but refused to take his eyes of the Master, even while talking to the Doctor, something that caused an amused smirk to show on the Masters lips, further unsettling Jack.

"Right, so what brings you to Cardiff? Not a sudden, irresistible urge to see me?" he asked while moving to the left, keeping the Doctor between himself and the Master.

"No."

"Too bad." He grinned. "What then?"

"The Tardis is broken, or sick, or both. Hard to tell right now." The Doctor replied looking glum. "Look, could we talk about this somewhere more private?"

Jack nodded quietly, hesitating for a moment, before deciding to take them to the Hub.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** BBC still owns Doctor Who and Torchwood, I'm just borrowing it for a bit.

Once there they found that the large industrial looking, underground complex known as the Hub was virtually empty. Well except for Ianto who was looking down at them from one of the platforms further up.

"Anyone else here?" Jack called up when he spotted him.

"No, they went home after bringing in another weevil. Oh but Tosh did mention there was a strange reading on the rift monitor, nothing big, just unexpected."

Jack nodded, looking back at the Time Lords now trailing behind him. "That would most likely be us, yes." The Master confirmed. The Doctor was currently busy being fascinated by the pteranodon circling up near the ceiling.

"You have an actual, living pterosaur? Well a pteranodon to be exact… That is brilliant! Somewhat dangerous, but brilliant." The Doctor grinned, but after stumbling and almost falling on a staircase he took his attention of the winged reptile.

"Nah, she's pretty friendly. We call her Myfanwy." Jacks grin was almost instantly turned into a grimace as the reptile let out a loud, horrible screech. Obviously someone was being sarcastic when naming her. "…And that's why we don't call her by name that often." He added and continued up to his office. Once there he seated himself behind his desk and offered the other chair to the Doctor, leaving the Master standing, and making it clear he'd cherish what victories he could get. Slightly annoyed, but so far quite unimpressed the Master quietly studied the writing on the glass windows behind Jack, leaving the Doctor to try to get something useful out of Jack and Torchwood, something he had considered virtually impossible for quite some time.

"So what's wrong with the Tardis? And what does it have to do with me?" Jack asked, trying to ignore the Master who was a bit too close for comfort for his taste.

The Doctor took a deep breath and started to explain everything to Jack. When he reached the end he'd gone through about three pointless techno babble sessions, two exasperated rants a couple of pointed complains about travel companions mood swings and somehow doubled back over his own arguments half a dozen times further confusing things. In the end it took Jack a couple of confused minutes to process it all but he still managed to get a few useful bits out of it.

"So your Tardis had some sort of break-down, emergency existed the time-vortex and set you down here and you can't get anywhere or anywhen if you can't get it fixed, and you want to go through our archives to see if we might have anything you could use?" He gave the Doctor an uncertain look, almost expecting, and quite hoping, he was joking.

"That pretty much sums it up, yhea." The Doctor nodded, looking quite serious, yet somehow managing to look happy at the same time.

"You're joking. No offense Doc, but why would we do that? Torchwood needs all the equipment it has, not to mention you-"Jack was cut off by a well-timed and obviously well-planned interruption by the Master. It certainly derailed his train of thought, and didn't make any fonder of the Time Lord in question.

"This is quite interesting, flawed to the point where it's nearly useless but interesting nonetheless." The Master gave a fake-friendly smile, the kind every politician worth his name has mastered, while looking just a little bit thoughtful and still facing the window.

"Oh and you know that after looking at it for what? 10 minutes?" Jack turned to face him.

"Hardly. Any second year student and above should be ashamed of himself if they need more than three minutes to see that this doesn't add up properly." He couldn't help but sneer. "No, it took this long to figure out just how you managed to make this many errors in such a rudimentary calculation."

Jack could only sputter and glare, so the Master continued. "I admit it took longer to realize than it should have, but then I thought that not even you would make such a basic mistake." He paused.

"…What mistake? Of course it's not exact, the rift constantly fluctuates and those are just the core numbers that never changes, as far as we've been able to detect. Our reference point if you will." Jack pulled himself up, trying to regain some lost ground in this argument.

"Really? Well I regret to inform you that you couldn't be more wrong if you tried." The Master smirked, looking genuinely amused now. "Meaning your point of reference is flawed. You are obviously aware that a good part of this equation was done in Gallifreyan, and that part is correct more or less. Not quite, but more or less." He pointed out some figures on the largest window that were obviously annoying him. "Then someone went and added equations in your standard decimal system, which wouldn't be a problem in itself if it wasn't for the fact that whoever did it was a complete moron."

"Hey, wait a minute. Tosh is no moron, and this has helped us more than once!" Jack gestured wildly at the large amount of complicated equations on the glass, truth be told it had taken Torchwood 3 a very long time to get those numbers sorted, but Toshiko had perfected it as far as he was concerned.

The Master massaged his temples before continuing, Jacks loud voice was giving him a headache, but he wasn't about to admit it. "Yes, well then she should have taken into account that your standard decimal system at the most permits one to work in three dimensions, while ours basically is a hexadecimal, curvilinear five dimension system. Well the simple system, like the one used here." He took in Jacks flabbergasted expression before adding the final nail to the coffin, "Really, it's quite simple to fix."

"And how inexact is it as it is right now…?"

"Ohh you'd need at least a few decades margin of error as it is right now…" The Doctor who had quietly watched the exchange offered. Well it probably wasn't quite that bad, but he had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"Decades? I doubt it's that bad." Jack looked back at the Doctor who was leaning back comfortably in his chair.

The Master grinned behind his back, glad to see the Doctor had caught on. "Yes decades. Perhaps you've been lucky until now. But luck only gets you so far." He shrugged when he got Jacks attention again.

"Uhu, so will you fix it?" he gave the Master a doubtful look and turned his attention back to the Doctor who smiled apologetically and excused himself with a "He's the math genius here, not me." This was a blatant lie, since both could run far more advanced calculations through their heads while they slept.

Jack let out an exasperated groan and turned back to the Master. Neither the smirk nor the simple "No." surprised him at all. On the other hand, he wasn't really expecting him to turn and leave, but he couldn't deny that he was relieved.

"...I completely lost that one didn't I?" Jack sat back down in his chair and looked at the Doctor who was still grinning.

"Well... yes, you did actually." He ended up agreeing.

"And you're not going to explain what the Master is doing here? Or why he's acting all... sane?"

"Can't." The Doctor shook his head. Technically he probably could, but he really didn't think it was any of Jack's business.

"And now you're helping him to blackmail me?" Jack reached out for his coffee mug, only to find it empty.

"I think it's the other way around this time actually." The Doctor corrected, seemingly oblivious to how this must look.

"Right." Jack glared, starting to really despise this day. "So you get to poke around and see if you can find anything that could possibly help your Tardis get off the ground again, and one of you do whatever needs to be done to sort those numbers out?"

The Doctor nodded in agreement. "It won't take long to write down an explanation and what you should have done and adjust the equation."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Still don't own doctor Who or Torchwood. And sorry if Jack doesn't seem quite right, he's tricky to write for me. Also this and the next chapter most likely won't be as funny as the first four, but to be honest, you'll just have to live with that since I know where I want to go with it. One chapter left then it's done!

Jack led the Doctor down a long corridor, entered a large room at the end of it, did a beeline past the massive amount of filing cabinets that had been jumbled around at some point or another and held the door on the other side of the room open for the Doctor.

"First four floors are mainly small and medium sized things, some we know what it is, some we don't. Bottom floor is for the big stuff. Knock yourself out." He flipped a switch on the wall and the cavernous room lit up, revealing rows upon rows of shelves filled with alien gadgets.

The Doctor started to look over some things on a close by shelf that had apparently caught his eye, but quickly discarded them as junk, broken beyond repair or toys. He went through the first floor in less than an hour like this, finding nothing of interest and generally causing a mess as he didn't have the courtesy to put things back where he had found them.

"So any idea where the Master went?" Jack asked when the Doctor was about halfway through the second floor.

"No, why?" he replied, turning over a spherical object that was about the same size as a football and made from what appeared to be glass with thin metal wires snaking through it. "This might actually be useful." he grinned. "It's an energy converter, well part of one anyway, but I should be able to modify it to work with the resonators." he beamed, shoving the thing into Jacks hands for him to carry.

"You don't know where the Master is or what he's doing?" Jack said slowly, barely registering the energy converter he was now holding.

"No. I'm not his nanny. He probably got bored. He'll show up eventually."

Jack dropped the energy converter when he heard that and sped up the stairs and out to the rest of the Hub. He most certainly didn't want the Master lose in there. The Doctor on the other hand was just glad he had been able to catch the device before it hit the floor.

He continued exploring the first four floors, finding bits and pieces of technology he could probably use, not to mention finding a few bits and pieces of technology that he really didn't trust Torchwood with at all, the most startling of these was a broken De-mat Gun. Luckily they didn't seem to know what the weapon was as the small tag on it read "Energy weapon? Possible Judoon origin?". The Doctor would have laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all, but he was already to busy disassembling the broken weapon to make as much of it as possible fit into his pockets. He didn't want anyone to get a hold of it, not even the Master. Well especially not the Master actually. Once he'd finished he decided that as soon as the Tardis was off the ground again the weapon would be destroyed, if he could find a star hot enough to be able to melt it.

But if the De-mat Gun had left him breathless the thing he found sitting on the bottom floor knocked him of his feet. For starters the bottom floor itself wasn't a floor as much as it was a hangar, and a big one at that. the Doctor couldn't see one, but he assumed it had a separate entrance somewhere. But no, it wasn't the size of the room that stunned him, or the large but heavily damaged Dalek ship sitting in the center of it. And the wreckage of an Anubian ship, parts of a Judoon tower and half of a Sontaran scout ship didn't even phase him.

It was the moss green rectangular box sitting in a nearby corner that had made him stop to stare in complete and utter disbelief while gripping the railing so hard his knuckles were turning white. It was a SIDRAT.

Recovering from his initial shock he practically flew down the remaining stairs and rushed over to the small ship, only to find it locked. "Oh, come on!" He glared and banged on the doors with the palms of his hands a couple of times, then tried to sonic the lock. The banging of the doors only served to hurt his hands and the sonic screwdriver did absolutely nothing.

When Jack found him he was back to banging on the ship doors in frustration, but now there were a rather impressive pile of knick-knacks, wires and strangely blinking or glowing things next to him.

"You know, according to the records no one has been able to open that thing since it got here 50 years ago." Jack commented walking up behind the Doctor, causing the Time Lord jump.

"Oh, so does that mean someone was able to get inside it at one point?" The Doctor inquired.

"Not sure. It's been a while since I read those files." Jack put his hands on his hips, trying to think. "But I guess we could just take a look at the report, it should be in a cabinet upstairs."

Jack led the Doctor back up to the first room they had entered. "The rift caused a bit of an earthquake a while ago and we haven't gotten around to sorting this out yet." Jack said to explain the mess. "But that box showed up 50 years ago, and the files are organized by date so it won't be too hard to find."

The Doctor nodded and they went to work sorting through the filing cabinets, ignoring the ones with the wrong dates on them, turning over the ones they couldn't read and sighing with frustration when the ones from roughly the right time period came up empty.

"By the way did you find the Master?" the Doctor asked a while later, just having finished looking through yet another cabinet of files and reports without any luck.

"No, Ianto said he left the Hub a while ago now." Jack replied with a grunt, moving a cabinet out of his way.

"Too bad, could have used his help with this mess." the Doctor sighed and opened yet another cabinet, this one apparently containing reports ranging from April 1959 to July 1959. "Busy year for you lot, 1959." he noticed while flipping through the papers.

"Yhea, looks like it." Jack agreed and came over to help.

After 10 minutes or so Jack pulled out a folder from one of the drawers with a triumphant "Aha!" and gave it to the Doctor.

The Doctor quickly skimmed through it, noticing the doors had indeed been open when it arrived, but had later been closed and they had been unable to open it again. But it did hold a vital piece of information that made the Doctor grin. "Jack, it says here they found a small, flat metal object inside the SIDRAT, where is it?" he pointed out a spot in the appendix with the description and item number.

"Should be on floor three. I think." Jack wasn't quite done talking yet, but the Doctor was already dragging him back downstairs, so he decided it would be easier to keep up if he shut up, at least for now.

As soon as they got to the third floor Jack took the lead again, steering them to a row of shelves filled with small boxes. Once there he quickly located the box they wanted and pulled it out.

The Doctors cheeky grin somehow managed to grow a fraction wider when he opened the box and pulled out the small metal object.

"What is it?" Jack asked with a bewildered look.

"This is a key." The Doctor beamed holding it up by it's chain and letting it spin slowly.

"It doesn't look anything like a key to me." He said sceptically.

"That's because you've spent to much time on Earth." he grinned and started to walk back to the SIDRAT. "Besides, the key to the Tardis used to look almost exactly like this for a long time, then she decided to change. To bad, I liked the old key."

"And just what is a SIDRAT?" Jack asked as they got back to the green box and the Doctor started to fiddle with the lock. "We always called it the box."

"SIDRAT stands for 'Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-Purpose Transporter' and was built by the War Lords using Time Lord technology. It's basically a primitive and ineffective type of TARDIS." The Doctor explained and finally managed to get the door open. "I guess this one somehow managed to avoid getting sealed away with their home world." he continued as he stepped inside to have a look around.

Jack of course followed him in and was more than a little surprised to see the condition the ship was in. "The report didn't mention anything like this."

"No, it didn't. But SIDRATS needed a lot of maintenance to keep working. After it landed here the systems must have gotten clogged up and caused an explosion." The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the console room, trying to detect any systems still running, especially any security systems. "And it's dead, completely dead. Which is a good thing, means we can work in peace. If we can get some light in here."

Jack stepped outside for a few minutes and came back in with some torches and a toolbox and they set to work.

"So if this is some sort of Tardis, how can it be a good thing that it's dead? And if it's so primitive how can you be sure the parts will fit?" Jack asked after they had found some stairs that lead down under the main console and then kept spiraling down around what looked like a time rotor.

"Because SIDRATS were never supposed to be alive. They were built, just like any other machine, but their systems sometimes behaved a lot like a living thing." the Doctor said, still scanning for signs of running systems with his screwdriver. "And they came from a race who thought the sole reason for existing was to wage war." he spat. "As for the parts fitting. I can't be sure, but it's based on Time Lord technology so it's worth a try. Besides I'm very good with making things work." He smirked, and mentally added 'and so is the Master', but he didn't say that out loud.

They ended up spending a few hours stripping the SIDRAT of usable parts, both what they would need right away and what might be useful in the future. When they were done and everything was loaded into boxes it was already late and Jack was exhausted. Even the Doctor admitted to feeling tired, but still insisted on getting back to the Tardis.

"Fine fine. We'll put everything in the car. Just show me where to go." Jack gave in, sounding quite unhappy about it. But at least he'd get the Doctor off his back faster. Really when had he gotten so frustrating anyway? He didn't remember him ever being so annoying in the past. But then again he had always been too attached to the Tardis for his own good, so maybe fixing it would fix his mood. Jack hoped so.

After nearly falling in the stairs a few times they managed to get everything up and out of the archive and down the long corridor. But the last, short set of stairs finally got the better of the Doctor, who stumbled and came crashing forward into Jacks back, causing both men to fall the last few steps and hit the floor hard. Well Jack broke the Doctors fall, but the Doctor still somehow managed to get one box on his lower back and one box on his neck and head. The very long and elaborate string of alien curses were enough to make even Jack blush. Well the parts he understood anyway, he suspected the Doctor was swearing in every language he knew, which apparently were a few. He finished it off with a very human and very British, "Oww! Bloody Hell!" while he tried to pick himself up from the floor.

The Doctor and Jack managed to get everything back into the boxes, and the boxes and themselves into the car without any further injuries. Which their dented and wounded prides were very grateful for.

"Well at least everything survived." Jack said in an attempt to cheer his friend up.

"Yhea." He nodded in agreement. "Left here, then a right." he pointed them down a small side street, then a narrow alley, just wide enough for the car.

Jack stopped just in front of the Tardis and went around back to get the boxes while the Doctor went to open his time machine.

"What?"

Jacks head snapped up, looking at the Doctor.

The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver again and aimed it at the ship. "What?"

"Whats wrong Doc?" Jack asked, leaving the boxes and closing the rear hatch.

"The Tardis has quarantined herself. For 24 hours, no one gets in or out." he said with a slightly tired and annoyed voice.

Jack was tempted to ask why, but thought better of it, the Doctor didn't look like he was up for explaining things right now. "So you need a lift anywhere or anything?"

The Doctor thought for a moment, then shrugged and put on his typical carefree expression. "Nah, just take the parts back and we'll pick them up later."

"All right. What are you going to do then?" Jack reluctantly moved up to the drivers side again.

"Take a walk I suppose." He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

After Jack had got back into the car and disappeared out of view the Doctor closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, searching for the Master. It took him a little while to pinpoint him, but once he did he smiled a little and started to walk.


End file.
